Hike #11: Gravity

When

Thursday, 2015-02-06

Where

TwoBit Peak, from the 40th St Trailhead

Duration

1 hour

Notable

First hike this year both after work and in daylight

Today I reached the summit of TwoBit Peak just in time to catch a whiff of odorous evidence emanating from two lawbreaking teenage boys, and also just in time to watch the sun dip behind the mountains to the west.

Mountains stand still, in contrast to the sun, which zips across the sky at astronomical speeds. To someone here on Planet Earth, one moment the sun is in full view and too blinding to look at, a moment later it shines its last ray of light before night has come again.

Atop TwoBit Peak, two other teenagers, a boy and girl, asked me to take a photo of them. I obliged. Bodies in orbit, hands gravitating towards each other—their hormones, like the sun, also moving with great speed.

Of course, the sun isn't really moving. It's an illusion created by the spin of the earth.

Hike #10: Sweat

When

Thursday, 2015-01-29

Where

TwoBit Peak, from the 40th St Trailhead

Duration

1 hour

Notable

Sweatiest hike so far this year

Today's hike was another one-hour pre-work workout starting at the 40th St Trailhead. The weather was as muggy as I've ever seen in Phoenix in the winter. Five minutes into the hike, when the trail first tilts up in earnest, I regretted my choice to wear a long-sleeved wool shirt. Soon thereafter, long before I reached the summit, I lost the battle of keeping my eyeglasses free from smeary sweat dripping from my forehead, and my shirt had sweat marks not just in the usual places.

All in all, it was another good morning to be out hiking.

Hike #9: What's in a name?

When

Thursday, 2015-01-22

Where

TwoBit Peak, from the 40th St Trailhead

Duration

1 hour

Notable

Windiest hike of the year so far

This morning I expected to hike up Dixie Peak, but a freshly painted signpost on the trail noted I was instead hiking up TwoBit Peak. No, I wasn't lost.

Later that morning, while at work, I researched the new name and discovered (1) the name change happened sometime in the last week and (2) may have been an act of vandalism. Such drama!

What about the new name? Two bits make a quarter, which once upon a time bought a shave and a haircut. These days when I hear two bits, I think of computer bits, with each bit representing a one or zero. Two bits together represent a number from zero to three.

Many people believe eight bits make a byte, but this isn't always true. Eight bits make an octet, and an octet happens to be the same size as a byte on most computer systems today, owing to the popularity of the 8-bit microprocessors developed in the 1970s. However, the formal definition of a byte is that which is the smallest addressable region of memory in a computer, and so a byte may be any size. This is, of course, irrelevant information for the vast majority of people, even a majority of programmers.